


His Own Wings

by alutiv



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B drabble, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Gen, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alutiv/pseuds/alutiv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is only one good dream, and in that dream, he flies again.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Own Wings

**Author's Note:**

> No bird soars too high if he soars   
> with his own wings.  
> William Blake, _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_

John Watson has nightmares. The nightmares, predictably enough, are about his friends, his brothers-in-arms, dying under the hot Afghan sun again and again and again. The details change, but they are always gruesome, always horrible. And yet, he honestly prefers the nightmares to the good dream. When he wakes from the nightmares, it doesn’t take long to remember that he is in London, not that godforsaken desert, and relief at that tempers the old grief.  
  
When he wakes from the good dream, there is no relief. There is only pain, both remembered and ongoing, and grief for what he once was.   
  
There is only one good dream, and in that dream, he flies again.  
  
He is sixteen again, his Revelation Day, his first transformation. His immediate family’s alternate forms are not exotic: a chaffinch, a linnet, a bunting. But there are eagles in his mother’s line and rumors of an egret among his distant cousins, and so a slim chance his _avimuto_ would be something a little less ordinary.  
  
In the sheer exhilaration of his first flight, he could nearly forget the disappointment of being a starling.   
  
He never dreams of his last flight, the one that nearly cost him his left wing. The one that did cost him everything else that mattered. He isn’t sure if that’s worse, or better.


End file.
